


The Abandonment of Vice

by apiphile



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Cocaine, Don't Try This At Home, Gen, M/M, Manipulation, archiving old fic, did you know cocaine is addictive, i miss cocaine, no exciting tagging performance art today whoops storry, see previous remarks re addiction, writing repressed pov is the best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:03:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes gives up his cocaine solution. This is not his decision. He is not happy about it, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Abandonment of Vice

When the fourth week of Holmes's involuntary separation from Watson's cocaine solution came to a conclusion his temper was little more than a tattered shadow of its former self; Watson had been thorough in his removal of the substance from the premises and insistent in finding errand boys to attend to the most trivial of their needs in the understanding that his colleague was not to avail himself of any further supplies of that nature by _any_ means. Attempts to bribe the youth whose deliveries kept Watson's practice from disintegration were many and quite predicted by Watson, who took immediately to interrogating them on their way in and out of 221B Baker Street.

"This is undignified and unnecessary and you are _standing in my light_ ," Holmes barked, hunched over his worktable with the set to his shoulders that Watson rather thought made him seem like the manic and melancholy doctor of Mrs. Shelley's story. The table was covered, inches deep, in apparently identical pieces of headed letter paper, each bearing a differently-hued stain in the centre, the variation among them so nice, so minute that Watson had to strain to see them. "I said you are standing in my light, Watson, and this experiment requires accuracy and _natural light_ if I am to successfully determine --"

"Perhaps you had better face the window." Watson gestured to the large sash windows which were still admitting a most adequate quantity of daylight in his opinion, in spite of the room's easterly aspect and the late hour. The weather might even have been described as "glorious", if a trifle too warm.

Holmes did not stir, and nor to Watson's surprise did he thump the table as he was wont to do in these periods during attempts to wean him from his diabolical reliance upon the content of the Gladstone bag. He merely tightened his shoulders and said in terse tones, "I cannot _move_ my table."

Watson gave this statement the consideration it was due, and opened his shirt cuffs with a sigh. "Then I shall take the far end and you the near and _together_ we shall move your table."

"You mistake me, Watson, and I suspect you mistake me _on purpose_." Holmes crouched lower over the table and Watson felt one of the guy-lines securing his temper to the ground come loose, as an abrupt severance as if cut with a knife. He was wearing the spectacles with the delicately-coated lenses designed to both magnify and tint all viewed through them a little yellow, and Watson noted that the stains upon the headed paper were all degrees of ochre. "I can _not_ move the table and I _shall_ not until this experiment is concluded and you are _still standing in my light_."

From quite an unexpected quarter of his soul Watson wished that he were petty enough to give voice to the thought, _I was not aware that you had signed a writ of ownership on daylight_ , without the moral insulation of some form of intoxication. Instead of this uncharitable and irrelevant aside, he straightened his collar (although it was not crooked), and cleared his throat. 

"Yes what _is_ it I have only a few more hours of natural light left Watson be quick," Holmes replied in one breath, his very hair reflecting his impatience in each trough and peak of uncombed disorder. "I see you will _not_ move until I have answered you, you wretched blackmailer."

Accustomed as he was by now to these terms of abuse directed toward his person from the midst of Holmes's interrupted concentration, Watson found himself needful of a few short and steadying breaths before addressing his question to the spine and shoulders of his companion as his hands had quite of their own volition knotted into fists. "Very well, Holmes, I want to know how you have succeeded in smuggling more seven percent solution into the premises when I have been keeping so close a watch on your dealings that I have been forced to turn away patients."

Holmes gave no reply or indeed any sign that he had heard him at all, and Watson's hands grew painful in their involuntary clenching. 

"I can see you have recourse to the solution, you have not _slept_ in two and a half days and you are pursuing experiments whose reason and application lies outside of the realms of sanity," Watson continued. He stretched his fingers out with care and no small difficulty, and occupied himself in arranging the lie of his moustaches to more closely ally with the shape of his upper lip, as best he could without a comb or a barber to wield it. 

When Watson had given this evidence he was sure Holmes would ignore him a second time, but his colleague allowed him the unequivocal lack of pleasure he afforded from hearing his estimate corrected to, "Three days."

At which utterance Watson experienced a curious rushing sensation, as if a gale was rushing through his head and out of his pate, a symptom he felt moved by with unprecedented regularity since his association with Holmes and, perhaps of more pertinence, since his skirmishes with Holmes's predilection for misusing his medicines. 

"What are you –" Watson abated his sentence before its conclusion and instead concentrated the efforts of his mind and body on unclenching a pair of rather insistent fists. "— what possible application can this, this, this _silliness_ have?" He meant to gesture at the content of Holmes's work table but did not think that removing his hands from their resting place upon his hips would result in such a gesture so much as it would a punch to his colleague's face, and so he left them in safety.

"You cannot possibly understand, my dear fellow, it is far too complex," Holmes muttered.

Watson decided that opening the window was a matter of some urgency, and he stood by it for a moment or so in order to regain his breath and his grasp upon what he felt were the few remaining strands of his sanity. Upon the street below he saw the evening dairy man bringing milk to the kitchens of Baker Street, a policeman shooing along an urchin who was probably not one of the Irregulars if he was so easily budged, and the sun inching its way lower and lower in the summer sky. This did not appease his jaw, which had locked in place and whose muscles seemed to be twitching.

"And I suppose I would not be able to understand how you have been able to acquire yet more cocaine solution against my advice, either," he said at last, turning from the window with the sash unopened.

"Your advice is old-womanish," Holmes said as if this was a matter of public record of which Watson required exhaustive reminding, and as if Holmes was most fatigued at having to be the bearer of this obvious information once again. "I tell you I must complete this work and if I am unfocused and weary it will be of no use."

He turned at last from the table in order to address Watson, who stood now blocking most of the natural light from the near window. His face was smudged and clouded with the dust of coloured fumes, the tinted spectacles of his own design sat askew astride the bridge of his nose, and between his unruly hair and the cavernous hollows in his orbits there was a glint of madness or perhaps just maddened concentration.

"Am I to assume that I shall have _no light_ until your unreasonable enquiries are answered?" he asked with what might have been severity two days ago but which now closer resembled the barkings of a dog or the accusations of a drunken vagrant. "Really, Watson, if you were possessed of an ounce of deductive reasoning you would have long ago determined my method of acquiring the medicines you are so set against the purchase of lately. I have _hardly_ concealed it."

If pressed on the matter later Watson would have been at a loss to explain how he came to be holding his dear friend and colleague against the faded and threadbare flock wallpaper of the nearest wall, by the throat, with his hand. He had been standing by the window contemplating with furious intensity the depth of his dislike of being patronised by anyone, least of all a man who had neglected to notice that he had ignited his eyebrows twice in that morning; and subsequent to this he found himself with his right hand locked around Holmes's throat, holding him against the wall and some inches off the ground. All that could be accounted for in the intervening time was the whooshing sensation and a small red speck in his vision which Watson rather fancied was the remains of his patience disappearing into the far distance.

"Watson," Holmes said, as he dangled some inches before Watson's face. He used a softer voice than before and his breath came at less even intervals. Watson allowed that his hand around Holmes's throat might be the agent of these respiratory troubles. 

He could not yet loosen his grip, and Watson believed that his unrestricted anger might now be the cause of the warmth of his face, chest, and stomach as much as the sudden movements which had led him to this dangerous and most unfriendly position. The collar of his shirt was too tight, and he was indeed most relieved that his cuffs had not been refastened as they would surely have restricted his movement as the starched arc of his shirt assaulted his throat. Had he been a man of artistic or aesthetic modes of thought he might have observed that what his hand did to the windpipe of his colleague, so his shirt collar did to his own in mirror; if Watson had been that man, he might also have been moved to ponder what this duplicity of strangulation implied. 

Happily, he was rather more concerned with keeping his head clear and free of errant thoughts regarding the body temperature of his companion's form, pressed between his torso and the wall and growing warmer by the passing second. Holmes was, while not by any medical measure a man of meaty stature or a Colossus of natural proportions, a full-grown man and heavy enough with it.

"Watson," Holmes repeated, "if you have any plan for continuing to choke the life out of me you may need the use of both hands-"

"Be quiet," Watson grunted. If the devil came to the world for the purpose of causing minor irritation to everyone Holmes encountered he would find himself outmanoeuvred and beaten by the man himself, who had raised lack of manners or consideration to an artform; Watson had been quite convinced that his companion was the very limit of civility before outright violence, but that was before he had been introduced to the man's sibling.

"I simply sought to-" Holmes's protest was extinguished in an undignified gulp that signified perhaps that Watson's grasp was too secure.

"I said be quiet," Watson said, marvelling as he did so that by some curious accident of anatomy his voice sounded calm and even, discounting the edge of his breaths. He tried to readjust his grip and was careful not to think of why he did not just release his colleague and apologise to him.

He did watch most attentively for any signal, such as a blue cast to his skin, that might suggest Holmes was asphyxiating, but while he might have taken care to refrain from bruising the neck of a miscreant in the pursuit of justice, he took no such care now, with his friend.

Although Watson's hand caused him evident discomfort Holmes made no motion to disengage him from the situation, neither pulling at Watson's hand nor striking at his arm or body to disrupt his nerves. He merely gazed upon Watson's face with eyes not fully open and an aspect of patience which had been entirely absent from their earlier interactions; he looked almost as if he might fall asleep. 

Watson's suit had grown close and most uncomfortable in the course of his actions and he was sure his face was quite red, as he also bore the experience of shortness of breath, perspiration and other outer signs of exertion. Holmes was not so very light that he could be hoisted from the floor with the ease of a house cat, and yet Watson was not convinced his mood had changed sufficient to allow the man's release. His fingers remained locked over Holmes's trachea.

With the ill fit of his well-cut suit and the scarlet in his cheek Watson knew there were other … processes … occurring to which no gentleman should refer unless absolutely necessary, and while as a medical man he might include the diagnosis of some terrible condition a dire necessity, John Watson felt that cowardice was the better part of valour on this occasion and excised the recognition of the symptom from his mind. He braced Holmes against the wall and rearranged his own position to ensure greater comfort while he coaxed his fingers to cease strangling his most dear friend.

Watson very valiantly ignored the indication that his _most dear friend_ was not suffering perhaps as much as he would have expected, or he tried to; his ears felt as if they might burn anyone who touched them, so hot were they.

The distribution of Holmes's weight was most inconvenient. Watson readjusted him again.

These rooms were d-mned hot, too, and he wished in vain that he had succeeded in opening the window before he _lost his temper_ with such shameful result. Watson's suit was chafing, which he had never known it do, and his collar pinched, which he was regrettably used to, particularly in the summer. 

His suit chafed, the room was too hot; Watson moved his weight again, and again, trying to find some point at which he might remain cool and comfortable instead of too warm and distressed. Holmes's skin was, he failed to ignore, hot, and quite slippery with sweat. The man could undoubtedly pry himself free. Watson thought it best not to follow this logic to a natural conclusion.

The room grew warmer still and Watson knew when the abominable tension lessened that he would now be able to release his grip. He stepped back with haste as Holmes slid down the wallpaper and succeeded in supporting himself on unsteady legs – of course, Watson thought, disappointed in himself for temporarily abandoning reason enough not to realise at once – Watson had deprived him of air and weakened his muscles. The dampness of his dressing gown bore witness to sweat and the distress of his body. That was the answer.

"Would you prefer it if I did not mention this?" Holmes said. He was short of breath, of course, and but Watson could not place his smirk's source at all. 

"That would be very kind of you," Watson said, struck with a sudden interest in the carpet pattern.

"Then perhaps you would extend a similar courtesy to me—"

Watson, who had last been this keen to retire to the smallest room only when Mrs. Hudson's kitchens misjudged ingredients in curried potatoes and the inhabitants of 221B had been in hot competition for dominance over the porcelain, was already entertaining thoughts of leaving the room with haste. "I am most obliged."

"Very good," Holmes said. Watson hurried away to submit his clothing to be duly laundered, and it was only as he undressed in his room that it occurred to him that he still had no idea just how his colleague was availing himself of his cocaine solution.


End file.
